E. E. Cummings And Krazy Kat

Amber Medland | Paris Review | 20th July 2022

On Krazy Kat, a cartoon strip by George Herriman that ran between 1913 and 1944 and which had "a cult following among the modernists". E.E. Cummings was a fan, as were Pablo Picasso and James Joyce. Herriman's formal experimentation was a big attraction. His panels are uneven, their borders reflecting the action within, with eccentric intermission sections to control the narrative pace (1,922 words)

Meal Planning In Remote Alaska

Bree Kessler | Eater | 13th July 2022

How to feed yourself in a rural Arctic community. Other than in the dead of winter, when it is possible to drive on the frozen river, all food must be grown at home or imported by air. People eat well by planning ahead. The freezer is everything — generally filled with precious moose meat. And yes, in extremis, Amazon Prime will still deliver items like coconut milk with free shipping (2,477 words)

The Lasting Anguish Of Moral Injury

Constance Sommer | Knowable | 18th July 2022

On the evolving idea of "moral injury". This is a new concept in psychology referring to the "psychic wounds" created by situations in which one must violate one's moral code. In a severe case, the sufferer can lose all trust in themselves. Initially seen in military personnel, the definition is now being expanded to cover other roles, such as that of a medical worker during a pandemic (2,679 words)

Promised Land

Eve Fairbanks | Guardian | 5th July 2022

Extract from a book about post-1994 South Africa, focusing on the impossible task handed to black farmers. The apartheid regime "managed to sell a used car on the verge of a breakdown to a family that only realised, when they got in to drive it, that it was a piece of crap. But the family had no other options, so it was necessary that they convince themselves they’d got something of great value" (4,892 words)

The Transgender Heir

Browne Lewis | Jotwell | 15th July 2022

If a parent has left money in their will to a child who is specified as a son, and if the child has transitioned to a daughter by the time of the parent's death, does the daughter get the money? A court would have to decide. Worst-case scenario: "If the gender mentioned in the will no longer exists, arguably, the heir could be treated as having predeceased the testator, and the gift would lapse" (1,340 words)

Written on the D rod Droid X

Tom Scocca | Slate | 20th July 2010

Once upon a time all smartphones were like this. Review of a 2010 Motorola Droid X mobile phone, dictated using the speech-to-text software built into the phone's Android 2.1 operating system. "I tried to write the title of this Using the voice recognition on the Deoid X but it didn,’t go very well. I tries the voice recognition. Wcause because the virtual keyboard ia pretty a.nohing annoying too" (808 words)

– from The Browser twelve years ago

On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more - plus selections from our decade-plus archive of the finest writing on the internet. Here's a taste of this week's edition.

Performance Of The Week

When The Levee Breaks

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform When The Levee Breaks at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. Elsewhere on YouTube you can find Robert Plant performing the song with Jimmy Page. The song was originally written and recorded by Memphis Minnie and  Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929.

Death And The Afterlife
Samuel Scheffler | Oxford University Press | 2013

Recommended by John Cottingham at Notre Dame Philosophical Review:
"Scheffler has produced a superb essay, entirely free from obfuscating jargon yet meticulously argued and demanding in exactly the right way, forcing us to think about hitherto unexamined implications of our existing beliefs. It is rich in psychological and ethical insight, and restores philosophy to its proper role of tackling the big structural concerns inseparable from the human condition"

The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:

When Coal Arrived In America

Clive Thompson | Smithsonian | 12th July 2022

Much as Americans are now being urged to shift from fossil fuels to renewables, so they were being urged two centuries ago to shift from wood-burning to coal-burning stoves. Trees were disappearing and coal was abundant. But most people resisted the new fuel and everything to do with it. "Coal merchants were all over the place in the late 19th century — and everybody hated them” (1,800 words)

Audio: South Pole Race | Cautionary Tales. The year is 1910. Two teams are racing to the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott heads a well-financed, technologically-advanced expedition. Roald Amundsen uses cheap sled dogs. Yet Scott is doomed to failure. Tim Harford explains why. (48m 08s)

Video: Change The Week | Ian Pons Jewell | Vimeo | 3m 43s  

Advocacy video from 4 Day Week, narrated by Stephen Fry, arguing that the world would be a happier and even a more productive place with a shorter working week

The Model Is The Message

Benjamin Bratton & Blaise Aguera y Arcas | Noema | 12th July 2022

When discussing whether an Artificial Intelligence can ever be truly “intelligent” or even “conscious” we plunge ourselves into confusion by using words that we would struggle to define even when applying them to our own minds. "The real lesson for philosophy of AI is that reality has outpaced the available language to parse what is already at hand. A more precise vocabulary is essential" (5,100 words)

Do Goats Like Goat Yoga?

Emma Wallenbrock | Slate | 7th July 2022

"Somewhat", seems to be the answer. But the choice of goat matters, both for goat and for attendant humans. The optimal matmate is probably the Nigerian dwarf goat, noted for its “calm temperament", "engaging personality" and full-grown top weight of 40 pounds, making it a touch more welcome, should it jump on your back, than a 150-pound Oberhasli or a 160-pound Nubian buck (1,030 words)

Runaway Wives In Medieval London

Charlotte Berry | History Workshop | 13th July 2022

Women fleeing abusive marriages in the 16C made surprisingly little use of their existing social networks. For one neighbour to challenge another on how he chose to manage his household was to question "an integral part of his masculinity, as well as to risk a legal suit of trespass". Best to move parish. Otherwise, the safest place to be when a husband came looking was inside a convent (1,748 words)

A Field Guide To Greek Metre

Carlo G. Carlucci | Antigone | 9th July 2022

Notes on a tongue in cheek little book about classical prosody. Vanishingly rare, it contains a translation of a 12C Latin text on the topic with delightful zoological illustrations. When it first appeared in the 1970s, it amused and annoyed classics scholars in equal measure, but its limited print run prevented wider distribution. It is now available to peruse digitally here (1,044 words)

Readers in the UK -  We would love to see you at our upcoming walking tour, Troublesome Women, on Saturday 16th July at 11.15am, in and around Liverpool Street and the City of London. Troublesome men are of course welcome! To join us, book your ticket here.

Corporate Buddhism

Judith Hertog & Carolyn Chen | Guernica | 11th July 2022

Buddhism in the US has become a default part of corporate life. The sociologist interviewed here argues that it is part of how big companies are becoming religious organisations. "They have an origin story, a mission, ethics, and a particular set of practices, and many of them have a charismatic leader, which are all basic components of organised religion. I would say that this is strategic" (2,984 words)

The Animal Crisis Is A Human Crisis

Alice Crary & Lori Gruen | Boston Review | 29th June 2022

Making the case for "inter-species solidarity" when it comes to questions of animal ethics. Habitat destruction, industrial farming and meat production are usually targeted by campaigners as being sites of transgression against animals, while the human victims — such as the low-waged workers in the meat packing plant, or the indigenous people who live in a deforested area — are overlooked (2,270 words)

Last Of The Bougainvillea Years

Zeina Hashem Beck | New Lines | 7th July 2022

Thoughts on displacement from a poet who has moved from Tripoli to Beirut to Dubai and beyond. Like her beloved plants, her life in each city feels "beautiful and out of place". The temptation to reach for familiar things in unfamiliar territory is best resisted — "I’m learning there’s imprisonment in trying to recreate the past" — but it is possible to feel anchored by the novelty of a fresh start (6,374 words)

Why Write?

Elisa Gabbert | Paris Review | 6th July 2022

Musings on a subject that receives much indifferent treatment: why writers write. This author navigates the clichés with aplomb before articulating her own purpose. "I think I write to think — not to find out what I think; surely I know what I already think — but to do better thinking. Staring at my screen makes me better at thinking. Even thinking about writing makes me better at thinking" (3,471 words)

How To Read English In India

Akshya Saxena | LARB | 10th July 2022

English in India has had many roles. Gandhi considered it "a language of slavery". Nehru acknowledged it as "a key to world knowledges". The framers of the Indian constitution saw it as "equally foreign to all" and thus "politically neutral". To many growing up in the 20C, it was the language of aspiration, still tinged with the tenets of colonialism but always full of promise and possibility (2,306 words)

A Madman’s Guide To Wagner

Philip Hensher | The Critic | 1st July 2022

Reminiscences of "a hopeless Wagnerian". Some of the music is so good that it "survives even a third-rate performance", while the rest requires expert handling. This piece concludes with a helpful ranking of the composer's most transformative passages. Good Wagner makes a permanent mark on the listener: "If I ever get a tattoo, it’s going to be of the first three bars of Parsifal" (1,425 words)

My Poison Snake

Erika Kobayashi | CrimeReads | 29th June 2022

Memoir about growing up with parents attempting to translate the entire Sherlock Holmes canon into Japanese. "My earliest years were spent in a version of Victorian England located in Nerima, Tokyo." When her father died not long after completing the great work, her mother honoured their life's obsession and "wore a deerstalker hat as she carried the urn home" from the crematorium (1,148 words)

Journeys Of The Pyramid Builders

Daniel Weiss | Archaeology | 13th June 2022

A cache of papyri discovered on the Red Sea coast has provided new insight into the lives of the people who constructed the great pyramids at Giza. Logbooks reveal the structures of the workforce, as well as what its members ate, where they went and why. One archaeologist describes these records as the closed thing to going "back there for fifteen minutes to see what was happening" (3,486 words)